Quest of the Dragon is like Bruce Lee's many movies, where he, the moral
man, enters into the honorable world of martial arts but is forced to
confront dishonorable opponents who choose to be immoral. Having slain
the leader of the Black Lotus criminal gang, Lee returns to seek solace
in his family residence, troubled by his own actions and his past. But
of course, the past has a way of catching up to a man and Lee is forced
to give up his father and a family relic for his transgressions. Dragon
charts Lee's rescue of what he has lost but in his very journey to
recover that which is important to him, he comes upon a potentially
greater conspiracy of global proportion; a revelation and a fight that
Lee's past forces him to confront.

Dragon is able to lift trademarks of Lee's cinematic products, including
music, sound effects and his unique Jeet Kune Do fighting moves. In
fact, I'll go as far to say that Dragon is able to tap the zeitgeist of
most of Lee's cinematic fare. This title focuses on what Lee did best:
fighting. A decade ago, it would have been a side-scrolling action
title, not unlike Final Fight, Double Dragon, et al. The developers'
formula is simple too: repeat Lee's movie fighting scenes in digital
form and sit back to watch the hordes of fans become enamored with him
yet again. If only it were that simple in crafting a game. Dragon
falters because it relies too much on what made the movies special and
does little to create a compelling game.

Let's cut to the chase about Lee's sojourn on the Xbox. There is
undoubtedly potential for something great to happen as Lee travels from
tropical vistas to urban night clubs in his quest, beating people,
smashing things up and pulling off his moves with style. There's
nothing wrong with that because Lee is, by comparison, well-animated,
textured and even does his trademark speeches. Everything else,
unfortunately, is a second-class citizen to him because at times, the
landscapes are vapid, sterile and empty. His foes are stiffly animated,
almost mechanical in nature. Cinematic sequences that link the fights
together are written poorly and even more poorly animated; notice how
when the heads and bodies need to move, they seem out of sync, like
someone suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Luckily, Dragon isn't a cinematic movie. It's still about the fighting
but here too, a crux is introduced to prevent the dragon from soaring.
Unresponsive controls are an infamia in fighting titles and poor ones
are like birds that cannot fly or guns that cannot fire. It contradicts
the very basic fundamentals of the genre's raison d'etre. You're able
to pull of a plethora of moves in Dragon and it features a unique
upgrade system (one of Dragon's main selling points) where you can buy
further moves. Why bother buying if you can't pull off an expensive
combo except by chance? A few basic punches and kicks will deliver the
same result anyway and that's not even covering times when basic
movement of the character is hard to pull of.

Secondly, Dragon suffers from some strange AI routines. True, most of
Lee's opponents, especially the ones in movies, were automatons anyway.
So perhaps it was a stylistic decision to model them like that. Those
are the simple ones that Lee plows with ease. They remind me a lot of
the dead zombies in Hunter: The Reckoning, where their special
move is to simply mob you with cheap hits. Even some bosses are prone
to have enormous Achilles heels that you can exploit. On the other
hand, we also have times when the opponents will catch you off guard and
perform crushing combos that will put you at a handicap. Furthermore,
they weren't even the bosses either. So it really begs the question -
are all these faults, with tough to pull combos, and extreme variance in
enemy abilities there to make the game difficult or your life difficult?
My guess is it's probably the latter.

I recall one time renting a Jackie Chan behind-the-scenes DVD where he
explained the Asian fighting movie genre. One of the things he covered
was the theme popular at Lee's time where half a dozen fighters would
surround the protagonist but only one would attack at once. Of course,
that looks very unnatural now and completely illogical but at the time,
it was a popular device to keep the fights in perspective for the
camera. It follows that this device was translated by the developers
directly into Dragon; untouched, unscathed. Except in its digital form,
when you get a full vantage point of what's going on, it looks and
performs rather silly. Dragon features a 'lock-on' targeting function
that further permeates this feeling that you'll only challenge one
person at a time. I think even the games industry has moved on from
that.

Yet Dragon continues to suffer more from an inadequate camera system.
It is supposed to be dynamic, trying to capture the action from the best
vantage point. The truth, however, is far from that. In fact, I would
argue that at times it tries to be the opposite. It develops a
propensity to move when you don't want it to move while at times, when
you would like it to move, it'll remain motionless. It also does
nothing in highlighting where you should be going next. Dragon's
developers have implemented an artificial invisible barrier to keep you
on the right track but the camera gives no cues as to where you should
be going. Instead, it's there to record you fumbling to find your way
through the barriers.

Altogether, Dragon is a disappointing tribute to one of the greatest
martial arts legends of all time. This title is certainly not a legend,
even if it has legendary loading times. Some people may disagree with
my claim that Lee was a legend and argue that he was more of a showman,
like Houdini was a magician but David Copperfield is more about
showmanship. At the very end of the day, however, they were all
entertaining, even if you knew absolutely nothing about magic or martial
arts. That's something Dragon is sorely lacking and an anemic storyline
gives no persuasive reason for players to slog through it. Lee's debut
on the Xbox does not resemble a dragon, but prefers to plod along like a
sloth, short on all the crucial fronts, lazily bumbling along everywhere
else.